


Everybody's Out on the Run Tonight, but There's No Place Left to Hide

by gondalsqueen



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Friendship, Hijinks, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 14:44:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4709768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gondalsqueen/pseuds/gondalsqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They had made their way a few thousand feet into the tunnels beneath the city when the stormtroopers found them. </p><p>Hera’s contact had said “secret research complex,” but the place was thick with military. They had stumbled onto something, all right. But there was no clear path through the complex. And Kanan had neglected using the Force for so long that he wasn’t sure he could sneak them anywhere in this crowd, much less into the data center. So many stormtroopers crawling around like a colony of ji-ants… they prickled at the edge of his mind, made his skin itch.  </p><p>Out of practice but trying, his senses overloaded, he didn’t realize any troops were in their hallway until they came around the corner and ran smack into a group of five.  One of the group had his blaster drawn already. In front of him, Hera went down like a droid with a busted circuit before she had a chance to register what was happening. He fought down panic—no use panicking about something that he couldn’t prevent—and dodged. Told himself that at least Hera was out of the line of fire. Shot methodically—easy targets. Knelt next to her prone form and fought down panic again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everybody's Out on the Run Tonight, but There's No Place Left to Hide

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of months ago, I got bored and dared the internet to make me write things. Then some lovely soul requested a one-shot about "the first time Kanan flew the Ghost" on tumblr. So this one's still for you, anonymous.
> 
> And wow, that title looks even longer when one bothers to capitalize all the words.

They had made their way a few thousand feet into the tunnels beneath the city when the stormtroopers found them. 

Hera’s contact had said “secret research complex,” but the place was thick with military. They had stumbled onto something, all right. But there was no clear path through the complex. And Kanan had neglected using the Force for so long that he wasn’t sure he could sneak them anywhere in this crowd, much less into the data center. So many stormtroopers crawling around like a colony of ji-ants… they prickled at the edge of his mind, made his skin itch.  

Out of practice but trying, his senses overloaded, he didn’t realize any troops were in their hallway until they came around the corner and ran smack into a group of five.  One of the group had his blaster drawn already. In front of him, Hera went down like a droid with a busted circuit before she had a chance to register what was happening. He fought down panic—no use panicking about something that he couldn’t prevent—and dodged. Told himself that at least Hera was out of the line of fire. Shot methodically—easy targets. Knelt next to her prone form and fought down panic again.   

Blaster fire echoed far in the caverns. He could hear the responding echo of boots on the ground—more troops headed their way.  

Hera was out cold but stable, pulse and breathing both steady—just a stun blaster. He ran his hands clinically over her arms and legs. No obvious broken bones from the fall. He’d look for a bump on her head later. For now, he flung her over his shoulder and ran for it.  

She would be furious with him. She would demand to know why he hadn’t just stashed her somewhere and gotten the intel on his own. He could live with that.   

Back on the surface, the night gave him cover. The Empire had set up this operation in a small logging town—at the end of the day, most of the exhausted workers tucked themselves into bed or the local pub. He encountered no one who might ask why he was carrying an unconscious teenage girl through the dark streets. He did, however, hear the ebb and surge of speeder bike motors—far way, coming closer, withdrawing again. They were sweeping the streets for him. 

Kanan drew on the Force in earnest for the burst of speed that got them to the Ghost in time. Hera was not as light as she looked when she was on her toes, shaking her finger in his face.  

“Chopper, lower the ramp!” he shouted into the wrist comm.  

Miraculously, the ramp actually lowered. Chopper stood there to greet them. The droid’s head twitched back and forth, taking in the situation, and then he started whistling at Kanan furiously. Kanan didn’t have time to check his wrist translator, but he guessed the gist to be,  _I leave you alone with her for TWO HOURS and you let this happen?!_  

“It’s not my fault! She’s just stunned. Look, will you just raise the ramp and get us prepped for takeoff?”  On the ship, Kanan slapped the button next to the cargo bay entrance, and the ramp moved obediently upwards. 

A rude blat from Chopper.  

“Well, she’s not GOING to tell you to do it, because she’s STUNNED.”  

An obnoxious tweet.  

“Yes you DO have to do it, because if you don’t, the stormtroopers out there are going to find us, and then you’ll be memory wiped into a nice, normal zombie droid.”  

Chopper responded by blowing a raspberry at him and rolling off, hopefully to start the engines rather than play another game of dejarik against himself.  

What next? He could hardly dump Hera in a chair and go fly. She was all right now, but if she went rolling around the ship bumping into walls, she could be seriously injured. He hauled her into the engineering bay where they had begun to stuff medical supplies, pulled the stretcher down with one hand, and strapped her to it. Arms out.  _He_  wouldn’t want to wake up with his arms pinned down.  

In the middle of that process, the Ghost’s engines hummed to life under his feet and he felt a momentary pang of almost-gratitude to Chopper. Thanks for not getting us all killed, buddy.  

A second later that feeling turned into deep affection, when the first blasts from TIE fighters hit their newly-activated shields. No more time. He drug Hera up to the cockpit with him—she would come around soon and be even more furious if he put her somewhere out of the action.  

Then he slid into the pilot’s chair. Raised the seat to accommodate his height. Apologized to her unconscious form—“Please don’t kill me.” Nursed the fuel pedal, adjusted the thrusters, eased the lever back, and took off. 

Flying the Ghost itself wasn’t a challenge. He’d flown plenty of freighters before he met Hera, probably before her legs had been long enough to reach the pedals. The challenge was flying a new-to-him ship with two TIEs on his tail.  

Chopper let him know in no uncertain terms that Hera wasn’t going to like this. “I’m okay with that,” Kanan told him. She wouldn’t yell at him until they were safe.  

The ship shook—a blast to the rear. He checked the blinking readout to his left and found that the shields were holding for now. Good. That would give him a little room to experiment.  

He toggled left, then right, trying out the Ghost’s responsiveness. A little hairtrigger, as far as he was concerned. …Of course, if you could control the speed, you could fly faster evasive like this. That explained a lot about Hera’s piloting.   

A line of laser fire cleared the bottom of the ship and disappeared in front of him, a near miss. Chopper’s remonstrance from the starboard panel added to the chaos. “No, I didn’t know where the sensor array was,” he told the droid. “I haven’t flown this ship before, remember?”  

An unrepentant blat in response. 

“Just get hyperspace coordinates, will you?”  

Hera’s station was covered in displays—a lot of information to process, when you didn’t know where to look. He took a deep breath and decided to hack this one through the Force. Another deep breath— _Clear your mind, Kanan_. And then he had his own sensors.  

After that it was easy to dodge the fighters. Right wing up in anticipation of a shot. Left wing up, just ahead of the other fighter’s canon. The universal pilot’s signal for “Hello.” They must have thought he was teasing them.  

To be fair, by the time they broke atmosphere he’d gotten the hang of it, and he was.  

Chopper tweeped at him again.  

“I know Hera usually fires at them,” he told the droid. “But I think we’re doing okay. Hold on.”  

He pulled hard to port, and they tucked into a tight roll. That move had two advantages—it let him show off, and it gave Chopper something else to squeal about. Then he fired the retrothrusters and the TIEs had to split to avoid crashing into him. A tight tuck starboard lined him up, and he mashed the nose gun. One fighter exploded into sparkles.  

Then Chopper threw the switch for hyperspace without warning him. That initial speed-up pressure pushing him back against the seat, and they were safe.  

He let out the breath he’d been holding. For the first time, he realized that the pilot’s seat wasn’t incredibly comfortable. It had obviously conformed itself to the shape of someone else’s rear.  

That someone else was watching him from the back of the cockpit, fully conscious and composed. She must have come around some time ago.  

“Stun gun?” she asked. 

“Yeah.”  

Chopper blurted out a string of complaint and explanation.  

“It’s okay, Chop.” Hera worked the strap around her middle. “Should I even ask about the mission?” 

Kanan unfastened the strap around her legs, cleared his throat. “…Maybe later.”  

She sighed. “Kanan…” Took pity on him. “Later sounds fine. Did you carry me all the way back to the Ghost?”  

He shrugged. “You’re not that heavy.”  

That eyebrow said that she didn’t believe him. As for the rest of the half-hour she’d missed… Might as well get that conversation out of the way now. “Hera, I’m really sorry.”  

She shook her head, confused. “For feeding me the rest of the Trammistan chocolate cake last week? Yeah, that probably made carrying me a little more difficult.”  

“No.” He felt his face breaking into that stupid grin it had only learned in the past few months. “For the Ghost.”  

And then she froze. “…Why? What happened to her?”  

“What? Nothing. The shields held. I’m sorry for flying her without asking you.”  

Her blank expression, uncomprehending. Then she was laughing at him. “Kanan, you don’t need to apologize for that.”  

“Well, that’s what I told Chopper! He seemed to think it was a travesty, though.”

She patted Chopper’s head, almost as if he could feel it. Kanan could swear she thought of that psychotic droid like some kind of house pet. “Chop has a tendency to think everything is a travesty.” 

 _Understatement_ , he didn’t say.  

“Kanan…” she considered. “When I met you, you’d been flying a suicide run with heavy explosives for…what? Months, right? And I didn’t get the impression that you were in particular danger. So I know you  _can_  fly the Ghost.”  

He paused with his mouth open, torn between making some smart-alek comment about his own amazing skills and blushing.  

“And every time—every single time—we have to run for it, you move aside and let me take the pilot’s seat. So I know you’re not  _going_  to fly her unless it’s the best plan we have.”  

That one he couldn’t even make a joke about.  

“As far as I’m concerned—as long as you’re not doing something stupid—you’re welcome to fly my girl any time you need.”  

Kanan added another mark to the long string of ways Hera made that ship into his home. But he wasn’t ready to accept the weight of that feeling, yet. Try to lighten the mood, instead.  

“You hear that?” he gave Chopper his best smug expression. “Store that in your databases for future reference.”    

Chopper tweeted, the skeptical sound of a small bird.  

“Don’t worry too much, Chop.” She patted the droid’s head again. “We’ve more or less accepted that _you_  order  _him_  around.”   

He thought she was probably joking.


End file.
